


You Thought Harry's Life Was Complicated Enough?  Ha Ha You Were Wrong.

by alwayslily22, Des98



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gay Draco Malfoy, Gen, Harry's abuse is mentioned, How about that, I don't have an autobiography, I sometimes proofread and sometimes don't, I start like two new fics a week, I'll finish them all eventually, I've wanted to write a creature Harry fic for so long, Indian Harry Potter, Indian mythology - Freeform, James Potter was half mexican half indian, Lesbian Pansy Parkinson, M/M, Oh my god you absolute fucking drama queen, Potter backstory, Pre-Drarry, Prisoner of Azkaban AU, Racism, Ron is both fascinated and terrified by muggle science, Sirius you're so damn dramatic just stop it, They were at one point the Putters, and I'm finally doing it, and all pure swagger lol, and all that, and does feature fairly prominently, and i'm rambling on my tags, and teaching him was probably a mistake, anglicizing shit, anyway y'all should know by now that I don't do consistency, because if I did it wouldn't be done yet, but anway you should maybe try this story, but damn I think we might be writing a story where it's not a main plot point, but it would literally be called All I Have are WIPs, but like didn't want to seem repetitive, but nobody's told him quite yet lmao, but you know, draco don't be a lil shit come on my dude, for once, honestly you're boyfriend is a saint for putting up with you, it's two in the morning, like can't you just say anything NORMALLY for once?, no archive warnings because i don't fucking know yet, not your typical creature Harry fic, thanks for coming to my tag talk, this is gonna be fun, we're all just a bunch of angsty gays with adhd
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-07-02 06:16:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15790665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alwayslily22/pseuds/alwayslily22, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Des98/pseuds/Des98
Summary: Are we finally deciding to do the obligatory Creature!Harry fic that every fanfiction writer finds themselves faced with at one point or another?  Why yes, yes we are.  Featuring Indian Mythology and a creature I could find very little information on (which is good for creative license, I guess?).  Good luck guessing it before the big reveal, lmao.  Wow, summaries are hard.  I should sleep but I won't.  Hermione's black, by the way, because that's just how it is, and Ron is the greatest best friend in the history of the world.  Severus Snape is having a real hard time and just wants to retire somewhere remote, but he can't because he made terrible life choices and therefore deserves suffering in a school full of children.  Remus Lupin is the best professor ever and deserves to be knighted for putting up with the dramatic fucker he has for a bofyriend.  I'm pretty sure my muse has just made me her bitch by this point, so hopefully you enjoy this or I'll have nothing to show for all the sleep I'm never getting.





	1. Prologue

October 1978, Kashmir, the honeymoon of James and Lily Potter

Originally, James and Lily Potter hadn’t been planning on taking a honeymoon with the chaos of the war going on in Britain, but their friends had insisted that they go and talk the time to “revel in the joys of a new marriage” (Sirius had wiggled his eyebrows suggestively as he said it, causing Lily to slap him).  Although it was on such short notice, James knew exactly where to take his new, beloved wife: to the ancestral home of his family. Somewhere around the fifteenth century, the Potters had moved to the Indian province of Kashmir for a while; family lore had it that Charlus, the Lord Potter at that time, had decided to travel after Hogwarts, never content to stay in one place.  Never, that is, until he landed in the Indian province of Kashmir some years later, fell in love with a village girl, and settled down like some quintessential fairy tale. While the head of the family thereafter occasionally made journeys back to Britain to handle affairs of the estate, for the most part the Potters had stayed, happy in their home and community in Northern India.  James’ father, Fleamont, had been born there, but had left when he was very young with his own father, Harold (after whom their son would later be named, although granted they chose to go with ‘Harry’ instead so it wouldn’t be quite as… well, they just simply didn’t want to saddle their child with the name ‘Harold,’ understandably).

Harold took his son back to Britain to advocate against the harmful regime of colonialism that the British were pursuing, and for a while it quite alienated the family from British society both wizard and muggle.  For an English lord to be advocating against colonialism was viewed as simply absurd, and while they kept their land and titles, by the time Fleamont had graduated from Hogwarts, Harold had died, sad, exhausted, and ready to join Fleamont’s mother, who had died shortly before he made the decision to return to Britain.  Fleamont, seeing what politics had done to his father, preferred to stay out of them, quite happy to live off the family fortune while experimenting with various potions.

While on a pilgrimage to México searching for ingredients, he met James’ mother, Eufemia (later anglicized to Euphemia during his wife’s eager undertaking of studying the English language), and theirs was a love at first sight, although Fleamont’s Spanish left something to be desired, as did Eufemia’s English.  But they made up for it by sheer enthusiasm, and by the time James came along, years after they had given up hope for a child and Fleamont had restored some of the respectability of the family name in the eyes of the public with his invention of Sleekeazy's hair potion (he actually spent most of his time working on medicinal brews, but Sleekeazy's ironically happened to be the one that became popular in apothecaries), they were both fluent in each.  When James was five, they’d actually had to hire an English tutor, as their son seemed to prefer to speak in ‘Spanglish’ in lieu of the proper form of either.

All of this history had led James Potter to where he was now, holding hands with the newly-christened Lily Potter as they stepped into the old but lovely bungalow that still belonged to the family, greeting the elves warmly as they put down their bags.

“Oh, this really is quite beautiful,” Lily sighed pleasantly.  “I’m glad we let that dumb dog talk us into doing this.”

“Hey,” James scolded (but he was laughing).  “That’s my brother you’re talking about.”

“I know,” Lily replied coyly, reaching up on tiptoes to kiss him.  “And stupid just so happens to be a family trait, Merlin help me.”

“Hey!” James called again, reaching to tickle her sensitive sides as she ran away from him, giggling madly.  The struggle ended with a long session of lovemaking in their bedroom, the window open to the autumn air, clean and fresh so close to the Himalayas.  Naked on the bed, they finished off the night with a meal of Rogan Josh and rice, feeding each other the aromatic lamb as they traded chaste kisses.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” she told her husband sincerely.  “I know this place means a lot to your family.”

“It really was important for us, but unfortunately I’ve only been once, and my dad only came back for the summer because my mother begged him to take us to see it; coming back made him sad, with everything this place meant to my grandfather.”

“I understand,” Lily said, placing a hand gently over James.  “I don’t think I could go back to where I grew up either, after everything that’s happened…”  By that she meant that her parents were dead and her sister and best friend turned out to be grade-A jerk-faces, but she didn’t need to say as much, because James had supported her through a lot of that as it happened.

“For our five year anniversary I’ll take you to Yucatán, where my mother grew up; there are a lot more happy memories there,” James promised to lighten the mood.  As they said goodnight to the elves, it didn’t occur to either of them that they wouldn’t make it to see that milestone.

______

Lily woke in the middle of the night to a fluttering of wings near the open window.  Sleepily pulling herself out from under a snoring James, she went to examine the situation, or at the very least get a nice view of the valley at night if it turned out to be nothing.  It certainly wasn’t nothing, however, but a pure white bird. Lily had never seen anything like it; her best guess was that it was some sort of albino partridge. She wondered why a partridge would be out so late at night, but when she saw its wing she understood; it was cut deeply and looked infected, and the bird in its distress must have been flapping about in a daze.

“Shhh, I’ll take care of you,” she told the bird softly.  “May I?” The partridge stopped thrashing quite so much as she reached out to take it gently, padding barefoot along the marble floors.  She summoned a silk robe to herself wandlessly, shivering a bit in the chill air but more concerned about getting to the potions kit she’d left abandoned in the parlour than she was with casting a warming charm.  She spent the next few hours doctoring and feeding the little bird before conjuring it a perch back in the bedroom so it could heal.

“Stay here as long as you need,” she told it sleepily.  “We’ll make sure you’re taken care of until you’re strong and healthy again.”

The honeymoon was only three weeks long, but luckily the bird was healed in two.  James had taken to calling it “Whitey,” to which Lily cheekily replied “I thought that was _my_ nickname!”  Then they’d laughed and again spent the afternoon tumbling over one another under the covers in the glorious haze of young love.  Whitey left that night (the bird seemed to keep up its nocturnal habits even as it healed, which Lily thought was somewhat strange, as it didn’t sleep too much during the _day_ either), and the couple waved her off with mixed feelings (James cried; Lily didn’t, although she would definitely miss the little lady).

The last night of their visit, Lily had a strange dream.  She was sitting in a pure white tree wearing only her dressing gown, and the branches were so tall she could see the moon as if it were only meters away.  On one of the beams sat Whitey, but a hundred times larger.

“How much did I _drink_ tonight?” She asked out loud, surely she had never had a dream quite so vivid and thinking that it must be the bottle of sweet wine that she shared with James causing this.  Whitey just cocked her head.

“You have done me a tremendous favour,” she trilled, “and for that I am grateful.  My lady the moon appreciates my return, and together we have decided to bless you with a great gift.”

“You really don’t have to,” Lily felt compelled to say.  “It was just a bit of common decency, really.”

“Still, that is rarer and rarer in these days, so you shall get a gift,” the bird declared, although she gave no mention of what it was, and before Lily could ask, she felt the tree shrinking.

“Goodbye, Lily Puttar,” Whitey quivered.  “I wish it were that we could meet again.”

By morning, all Lily had left of the dream was a vague memory and a slight headache, and James just laughed and kissed her when she told him she’d dreamt of ‘meeting Whitey on the moon.’  They’d packed their bags and called a cart, ready for a long day’s trek to catch their portkey in Delhi.

Not even a year later, despite using every protection charm they could think of, Lily Potter was pregnant.

_____________________________________

August sixth, 1993, Diagon Alley

Harry Potter had had a very long, tiring night, but he was free from the Dursleys for the rest of the summer, and that was what mattered.  His back was still burning quite a bit from Aunt Marge. “Well,” she’d said, looking at the scars on his back during the third day of her visit, “looks like Vernon at least knows how to give you a proper thrashing even if that school of yours doesn’t.”  Then she’d taken it upon herself to try to outdo her brother, her method of choice being Ripper’s dog chain in place of Vernon’s belt buckle. Harry wondered if he could buy something to help at the apothecary tomorrow without drawing too much suspicion.  He’d think on it over breakfast, he decided, as he went to take a very careful shower.

He was just trying to find the least painful position on the mattress (which was thankfully _far_ more comfortable than the one in Dudley’s second bedroom, which was so worn that the springs sometimes poked him through the fabric) when a knock sounded on the door.  Harry groaned, ready to tell Tom that he didn’t need any shampoos or extra towels or whatever the innkeeper would be coming to ask, when the other side of the door revealed the face of his most hated professor (well, after the one that was possessed by Voldemort, he supposed… although at least Quirrel didn’t fail him because the other students in the class took it upon themselves to mess up his assignments).

 _“Snape?”_ He gasped, trying not to sound too dismayed.

“It’s _Professor_ Snape, Potter,” the man snapped irritably.  “Now gather your things; I’m taking you away from here.  Honestly, _how_ Dumbledore thought it was in any way safe for you to be left alone in Diagon Alley for a month is beyond me, so I’ve come to collect you.”

 _“You’re_ going to keep me for the rest of the summer?” Harry grimaced, barely biting back a groan of despair.

“Oh Merlin no,” Snape snipped.  “I’m dropping you with Minerva, who’s agreed to take you.”

Harry felt his whole body slump in relief; Snape wouldn’t have been as bad as the Dursleys, for certain, since he wasn’t allowed to beat him, but he still wouldn’t have been at the top of his list of people to stay with.

“Quit rejoicing and turn on the damn light,” the potions master growled.  “I don’t much like standing in random hallways in the dark.” Harry rolled his eyes as he turned around but did as the man complied, pulling the chain.  When he did, Snape growled at him again.

 _“Where_ did you get that black eye?!” He demanded, and Harry cringed as he realised he’d forgotten all about the fact that Marge had backhanded him heavily yesterday, bruising nearly half his face.  The minister hadn’t noticed because he’d had the glamours on, but they were so tiring to keep up wandlessly (the only way they couldn’t be tracked by the ministry) that Harry usually took them off to sleep, and he’d forgotten to put them back up before answering the door.

“I fell,” he mumbled, falling back on the old excuse, the one that had always worked on Privet Drive (“My, that little brown boy is rather clumsy,” the neighbors had gossiped.  “As if poor Petunia didn’t have enough to worry about, what with him being such a delinquent and all…”).

 _“Do not lie to me, Potter,”_ his least favourite professor hissed (going purely on teaching skills, Snape was _definitely_ worse than Quirrelmort, Harry decided).

“I’m _not,”_ Harry lied to him, forcing himself to meet the man’s gaze defiantly.  Eye contact was a mistake, however, and he jerked back violently as there was a sudden pain in his head and then an invasive presence in his mind.  He panicked, falling painfully onto the bed as he watched some of his worst memories flash before his eyes, Snape viewing them carefully and with increasing astonishment and horror.  Harry in the cupboard, cold in the winter, hungry from having food deprived as a punishment and his whole body aching from the latest round of Harry hunting or from being Vernon’s convenient target when things went wrong.  Blood and belt lashes and trying to see through his shitty glasses that Petunia had picked up from a charity shop. Having his hands held to the burners because he’d burned the bacon when he was six. He thought he might combust from the shame as Snape finally pulled out, leaving him feeling as if he’d been stripped bare.  He’d almost rather that the man take the belt to him instead.

“Come on Potter; we’re going to the hospital wing,” Snape said, although his voice was dull and emotionless in place of hostile, and he was avoiding Harry’s eyes.

Harry wanted to protest, to yell and scream and dig his heels in, to tell Snape that he was staying right here and that he refused to be pitied, and to call him out for entering his mind like that, without his permission and with his presence there so unwanted.  But he couldn’t seem to make his body do any of those things, so tired and in pain and emotionally exhausted was he, so he found his feet following ‘Hogwarts dungeon bat’ of their own accord as Snape summoned his bag, not giving it to Harry but putting it over his own shoulder instead.

“This might be uncomfortable, in your current condition,” Snape said, and before Harry had the chance to ask “ _what,_ exactly?,” he felt as if he were being squeezed through a very small tube, and then Snape’s cool, sallow hand was keeping him from collapsing at the Hogwarts gates.

 _“Merlin,_ I’m going to have to carry you, aren’t I?” He groaned, and Harry didn’t even have a chance to say that ‘no way in hell, he’d sooner spend the night on the ground’ before he was being held against black robes and feeling more awkward than he thought he’d ever felt in his entire life up to that point.

To say that Poppy Pomfrey was not pleased would be the understatement of the century as she tutted over him and dressed his wounds and cursed the Dursleys under her breath while pouring endless phials of repugnant potions down his throat.

“You’ll have to get used to tasting those, dear, as I’m afraid you won’t be off them before the year is out,” she told him, and he thought he must have the worst luck he’d ever heard of.  Even being petrified by the basilisk would have been better than this. Oh, the _indignity!_

His mood did not improve in the least when the healer told him he’d have to stay all month, and despite his tiredness he eventually gave up on sleep and started drafting letters to Ron and Hermione.  He’d hoped this would never come up, but if _Snape_ knew about the Dursleys now, he’d be damned if he’d keep it from his best friends.  The only good thing that happened to him that week was Professor McGonagall coming in and showing him some signed adoption papers; he’d never have to go back to the Dursleys.  That was enough to make him forget about all his other problems for approximately three hours, until the professor had taken a break from sitting vigil by his bedside for a moment to go to the bathroom and Dumbledore, in timing too perfect to be coincidental, had come to take her place.

“Harry, dear boy,” he had said, “I know you were having quite a hard time at the Dursleys, but your mother’s sacrifice protects you there; you really ought to go back.  We can put more protection in place to keep them from hurting you.”

Harry had just looked at him, not quite sure what to say, when Professor McGonagall came back out and chased him off, screaming things he would never dare to repeat.

“Did he try to make you go back?” She asked, her voice going soft and doting in a tone he still wasn’t used to hearing from the stern professor as she turned to him.  “Don’t listen to a word he says; he was upset that I went behind his back to adopt you, since I knew he was terribly insistent on you staying there. But he has no legal standing, so don’t pay him any mind, pet.”  Harry just looked up at her with wide green eyes, his head spinning. First his headmaster was trying to send him back to his personal hell, despite the fact that he insisted he cared about Harry, and then his stern head of house was looking at him with an expression of absolute tenderness and addressing him with terms of endearment.  He felt a little overwhelmed, and although he was still happy to leave the Dursleys, the pure joy of before had been tainted by anxiety.

And that was his month; endless litanies of disgusting potions and Madame Pomfrey and Professor McGonagall (she’d told him he could call her Minerva outside of class, but it felt _wrong)_ fussing over him and tiresome boredom as he was forced to stay in bed.  There was pain, too, although that didn’t really figure into it quite as much, as he was quite used to pain, and under the two women’s tender care it was fading rapidly.  Still, by the time September the first rolled around, he was nearly ecstatic when the nurse reluctantly said that he could go to the feast later if he rested quietly all day.

All in all, Harry was nearly as glad to see the end of the summer as he always was, and he could only be glad that the next would be better.


	2. Chapter 1

The first week of school was a bit strange for Harry; Ron and Hermione had been looking at him out of the corners of their eyes as though he might break.  Ron watched him like a hawk to make sure he took every single one of his potions the moment they woke up and before they went to bed, and Hermione kept piling more food on his plate even though he was still working on getting his appetite back after not being allowed much food by the Dursleys for the first part of the summer.  And then there was the fact that he had been excused from most of the summer homework; he had reluctantly admitted to Madame Pomfrey and Professor McGonagall that the Dursleys wouldn’t let him do it and that he had to hide under the covers in the middle of the night and thus wasn’t finished yet, he’d expected them to let him work on it in hospital.  But instead, they insisted only that he rest and wouldn’t deign to let him so much as open any of his school books, promising him that it would be taken care of.

Perhaps strangest of all was the odd fact that Snape wasn’t being… well, he wasn’t being _Snape._ He avoided Harry’s eyes and didn’t taunt him at all in class; indeed he seemed to have lost the will to taunt _anyone._ When Neville messed up their first assignment due to his hands shaking so badly from fear of the professor, Snape had merely sighed, looked down his nose at the ruined cauldron, and turned away without a word.  Even stranger was that he wasn’t letting any of his Slytherins sabotage Harry’s potions, actually _taking points_ and letting Harry start over when they tried.  And his homework essays came back with _E’s_ and _O’s_ scrawled across the top instead of _D’s_ and _P’s,_ despite the fact that Harry hadn’t changed anything in the way he did his assignments.  Nervous that he was being easy on him out of pity, he’d knocked on Professor McGonagall’s door tentatively to ask her about it, but she’d read his essays and told him that they were very good and that it was quite spiteful of Snape to ever have given him anything but the grades he was earning now.

All in all, Harry supposed, it was better than it had been before, even if he had to sit Ron and Hermione down in private and tell them to please stop feeling bad for him, because he was the same Harry he always was and he hated pity.  They’d told him that they didn’t pity him, but that they were angry at the Dursleys and worried about him, and Harry had promised them that he was fine now but had eventually conceded that he couldn’t really just _ask_ them to stop worrying, since he’d worry about either one of them the same way.  Then they’d hugged it out and Hermione pulled out a behemoth tome that took up half the coffee table while Ron and Harry sat down to play wizard’s chess.  Ron was asking him if he thought that Professor Lupin had perhaps looked a bit ill today when Harry felt a terrible itching suddenly come over his back, between his shoulder blades.

“What? Sorry, I missed that,” Harry said, reaching back to try to give it a good scratch.  

“I was just asking if Lupin seemed a bit off today, but nevermind that?  What’s wrong, mate?” Ron prodded, looking at him in concern.

“Nothing really,” Harry sighed, even though it wasn’t _nothing._ “My back is just itchy.”

“Want me to scratch it for you?” he asked his best friend, who looked hesitant.  Would Ron feel the scars?

The redhead picked up on his line of thinking.  “Harry,” he sighed, “I’m not gonna judge you for having scars.”  Harry looked at him in surprise, his eyes like a deer in headlights.

“How- how’d you know?” he stammered, glad that Hermione had gone up to bed recently, so that it was only Ron there to witness his embarrassment.

“I just kinda figured,” his best friend exhaled wearily.  “I mean, you used to change in the dorm with all of us, and now you go to the bathrooms.  And you look skinnier than you did last year. I’ve seen Percy use glamours whenever he gets a really bad spot, and when you told us about the Dursleys I kind of put two and two together.  It doesn’t change the way I think of you at all mate, but you’re squirming like a bouncing bluebell, so can I please help you out?”

“A-alright,” Harry agreed hesitantly, as Ron took off his outer robe and pressed his nails up against Harry’s jumper, working up and down, up and down, not saying anything as he moved over the tangible razed lines in his best friend’s skin.  It helped a bit, and he could hear Ron yawn behind him, so eventually he thanked him and they both went up to bed.

He put up his silencing charms in case he had a nightmare and curled up under the covers, but he was just beginning to get comfortable when the itching that Ron had managed to reduce to just a niggling discomfort came back full force.  He spent half the night clawing at his back and barely got a wink of sleep, and Ron took one look at him the next morning and dragged him straight to Pomfrey.

“I don’t need to go Ron, it’s just a little itching,” he complained, but the redhead didn’t slow his headlong rush to the nurse.

“It could be a sign of something worse- Hermione was telling me all about how itching can sometimes be a sign of Hod’s… Hog’s,” he scrunched his face up in thought before sighing, “of a type of this muggle disease called cancer,” he finished, looking quite worried.  “Have you been having night sweats or swollen lump nods?”

 _“I don’t have cancer, Ron,”_ Harry sighed in exasperation.  “And it’s called a _lymph node-_ honestly, Hermione should really stop trying to teach you about science; it only scares you.  First you’re afraid that gravity is gonna fail and we’re all gonna float away, and now you suddenly think I’m dying.”

“Well, I’m not gonna take that chance,” Ron said stubbornly as they reached the hospital wing, pushing Harry through the doors in front of him so he didn’t try to run.  “Madame Pomfrey?” he called, and the nurse came through, followed by Professor Lupin, and Ron suddenly squinted at the man, curious.

“Wait, so you _are_ sick,” he told the professor.  “Oh Merlin- are you itchy? Did you give Harry the cancer?!” He was beginning to work himself up into a real panic, and Harry put a hand on his arm.

“I _don’t_ have cancer, Ron, for the last time,” he sighed in exasperation.

“I’m only here for a headache potion- but it’s not contagious, I assure you,” Lupin said, looking at the darker boy with concern.  “But are you alright, Harry?”

“I’m fine,” Harry assured him.  “My back is just a little itchy, and Ron decided to drag me all the way up here on a Saturday morning because he worries even more than his mum.”

“I do _not,”_ Ron argued, but he was gazing at Harry so intently it seemed as if he was afraid that his best friend could die if he blinked.  The healer merely clucked, taking Harry over to a bed.

“You can leave now, dear,” she told Ron.  “I’ll take care of him.”

“I’m not leaving,” Ron declared, crossing his arms stubbornly.  “I’ll stay over here so Harry can have some privacy during the exam, but I’m going to stay here with him until I know that he’s alright.”

“I suppose there’s no stopping you, is there?” Poppy merely shook her head.  “Very well- have a seat while I take a look at Harry.”

Ron made his way over to one of the chairs in the corner while the healer spirited Harry away behind a curtain and had him remove his robes.  She looked at the red scratch marks in concern.

“Hmm, you’ve really been having a time of it, huh?”

“I guess,” Harry admitted.  “It was just really itchy so I couldn’t get to sleep last night and I scratched instead, but it didn’t help.”

“No, scratching usually doesn’t, although it might feel better for a second,” the nurse told him sympathetically.  “But besides the irritation from you scratching it, I don’t see anything wrong…”

“I promise I’m not lying!” Harry swore, looking up at her anxiously, and as Poppy looked at his wide, fearful eyes it struck her that he seemed to be expecting her to yell at him or even start hitting him, even though she would _never_ do such a thing.

“I know, darling,” she told him.  “I just mean that whatever is causing it doesn’t seem to be a rash, and my diagnostic charms don’t show you as coming down with anything.  But it could just be the scars on your back bothering you.” When they were healing, they had certainly itched, but that had been two weeks ago already since they stopped and Harry couldn’t figure out why they would suddenly start up again.

“Sometimes scarring does funny things,” she told him.  “It could even be something else, honestly- the diagnostic charm would have shown me if you were having any sort of allergic reaction, but it could have just been something else irritating your skin.  Maybe you had a bug bite or two and scratched too much and now it’s just gotten worse; I’ll just put some cream on it and keep you here for a night, hmm?”

“Do you _have_ to?” he asked.  “Keep me, I mean?” The cream actually sounded quite nice.

“I’d rather, just to be safe, but even if _I_ thought it was okay to let you go, I fear Mr. Weasley would insist I hold you here for observation,” she laughed.

“I guess you’re right,” he sighed.  The cool salve that Madame Pomfrey put on his back helped a lot, though, and Ron stayed with him all day and played chess and exploding snap with him and told him lots of funny stories from the summer, like the time Fred and George put a stink bomb in Percy’s sock drawer or kept making fun of him for being a prefect and hiding his badge.

“Well, off you go,” she finally told the redhead at dinner time- she’d been overly generous by letting him stay for breakfast and lunch, which wasn’t something she usually permitted.  Ron still argued loudly, though, wary of leaving his friend, but Harry eventually reminded him that he probably ought to let Hermione know where they’d been all day, since she no doubt thought that she’d somehow missed them at meals and they’d gone to muck around on the quidditch pitch or something.

“Alright,” he sighed, dragging his feet out the door reluctantly.  “Love you mate- I’ll come first thing tomorrow, if you’re not out by then,” he promised, and Harry told him that he loved him too and then lied back on his bed, yawning.  He’d managed to get a pretty good nap after Madame Pomfrey gave him his dinner, but he woke up as the moon rose, the itching worse than ever. The nurse put more cream on his back, but it didn’t help.  Sighing worriedly, she’d given him a sleeping potion, which at least knocked him out so he couldn’t feel his discomfort.

Despite the potion, however, Harry woke up when the moon was at its zenith, screaming in pain.  His back felt like it was on fire, two red-hot lines down his shoulder blades feeling like they were weeping lava.  It was worse than any beating he’d ever had, as it felt like it was starting from his very bones and working upwards.

Poppy came rushing to his side, flipping him gently onto his back and gasping.  The skin was red and inflamed, and it looked like something was _moving_ under there.  She’d never seen anything like it.  Before she could even _begin_ to think of what to do, however, Harry gave one final, agony-wrought scream that made her heart clench as she could do nothing but watch his absolute _misery_ as the skin finally cracked open, blood spilling down the his sides and onto the sheets as _something_ pushed its way out on either side.  Unnoticed to either of them, with Harry in so much pain and with Poppy's eyes focused on his back, a line of black, evil magic was pushed violently from Harry's forehead, its own screams hidden by Harry's.  Then it was over as quick as it began, the wounds sealing themselves like they had never been, leaving Harry with two downy white wings, one on each shoulder blade, clean and fluffy and light.  These were not a predator’s wings, but the soft, gentle appendages of a songbird.

“What?” What is it?!” Harry asked anxiously, trying to crane his neck around.

“You… you have wings,” she gasped, conjuring a mirror so he could see them better.  When he did, he blanched quite drastically.

“What in Merlin’s name are those?!” he cried, reaching out to touch one.  It was soft, and to his surprise he felt the contact not only on his finger but on the strange wing as well.

“They look almost like something you’d see on a baby bird,” Poppy murmured.  “Those fluffy bits are the down that they have when they’re born. If I had to guess, I’d say you’re probably going to grow feathers at some point…”

 _“Seriously?!”_  Harry groaned.  “Wait,” he suddenly looked up at her.  “Did either of my _parents_ have this problem?”

“No,” Poppy sighed- it would certainly have helped her if they did and she’d had something to go on.  “I was the nurse when both of your parents were your age, and I can confidently say neither of them grew wings.”

“Then what if…” Harry looked like he was moments from tears.  “What if I’m not really theirs?” he stammered, lip quivering. Poppy just sat down and put a hand on his hair.

“Oh sweetheart,” she said, “you’re _definitely_ a Potter- I quite literally pulled you _out_ of Lily, and you came out looking so much like James there was no doubt he fathered you.  Lily would have had to look long and hard to find somebody else who was half-Indian, half-Mexican, and with the most atrocious hair I’ve ever seen, and even if she _did_ find somebody like that, she loved your father far too much to _ever_ have a child with anybody else.”

“Then why do I have wings?” he warbled, looking lost as he gazed up at her with his captivating viridian irises.  

 _“That,”_ Poppy sighed, waving her wand again in frustration, “I do not know.  I’ve cast diagnostic charm after diagnostic charm, and all they tell me is that there’s some sort of ancient magic that has bonded with your core.”

“Well I can’t _walk around_ like this,” he cried, waving his hands around.  The little wings, reacting to his flurry of movement, flapped rapidly, and the healer couldn’t help but think that he looked adorable, so small and short for his age and with his eyes wide behind the gold frames of the new glasses she’d gotten him and his little baby wings fluttering angrily as they responded to his emotions.

“I don’t want you casting a glamour while you’re still recovering,” she told him sternly, repeating the conversation she’d had with him earlier in the summer.  “But I’ll cast a glamour for you, just for the time being until we figure out what is going on.”

“Thank you,” he declared gratefully, throwing his arms around her in a hug.  

But no matter how hard she tried, the wings would not glamour.  She cast it over and over again for an hour and absolutely _nothing_ happened.  Eventually, she put her wand down with a sigh.

“I suppose whatever magic this is does not want to be hidden,” she told him apologetically, and Harry’s face fell but he thanked her anyway.

“I appreciate you trying,” he said.  “And I guess I oughta get used to this sooner or later, anyway…”

“That’s a good way to look at it,” Madame Pomfrey praised him, patting his head.  “Now try to get some sleep, all right love?”

“Okay,” Harry sighed.

But he couldn’t sleep, not for a single minute, no matter how hard he tried.  And the strangest part was that he didn’t really feel tired, not even when the sun rose and he realised that he’d maybe gotten six hours in total over the last two days.

He obviously couldn’t lie on his back, so he was resting on his stomach when Madame Pomfrey brought him porridge and toast.

“So, can I go after this?” he asked her, anxious about the sorts of reactions he was going to receive but knowing it would have to happen eventually and bored of being in the hospital wing after spending so much time there already this summer.

“Well, you’re perfectly healthy, and there’s no reason to keep you, so you’re free as a…” Madame Pomfrey caught herself before she finished the expression, figuring that it might not be the best thing to say right now.  “Yes, you can go,” she corrected herself, although it had already been clear what she was going to say.

“Thanks, Madame Pomfrey,” Harry replied, just giving her a smile even though he was still quite worried.  She’d been very nice and taken fantastic care of him, and none of this was her fault.

Ron had been rushing up to visit him, bringing Hermione with him and for once the first one in Gryffindor to leave the breakfast table.  When they saw Harry’s wings, they both stopped in their tracks, and Ron very nearly fell over.

“Well,” he croaked finally, when he could speak again.  “At least it’s not cancer…”


	3. Chapter 2

“How did this _happen?”_ Asked Hermione eventually, wanting to touch the wings in fascination but afraid of crossing Harry’s boundaries.

“I don’t know,” Harry sighed.  “Madame Pomfrey says it’s some sort of ancient magic, but nothing else will show up on the diagnostic charms, and they won’t glamour either.  Go on, you can touch them,” he told her, unable to stop himself from smiling slightly at the way she looked at them in wonderment. Madame Pomfrey had already charmed all of his clothes to fit over them, so he was wearing jeans and his favourite Weasley jumper (green, with a golden _H),_ and Hermione’s dark hands brushed along the wool as she tentatively stroked the top of them with a finger, slowly working her way all the way down to where the tips ended at the bottom of Harry’s back.

“They’re so _soft,”_ she whispered reverently.  “You’re like a baby dove or something…”

“Madame Pomfrey says I’m probably gonna grow feathers eventually,” Harry explained.  “But neither one of us are sure when, since nobody knows what is going on.”

“Bloody brilliant,” Ron breathed, touching the other wing carefully, as though worried he’d hurt it.  “Do you think you’ll be able to fly?”

“Don’t you _dare_ try until the feathers grow in,” she ordered Harry, when she saw his eyes light up at the previously unconsidered possibility, “and then only under adult supervision.”

“Alright,” he promised her, not overly keen of becoming a Harry-shaped spot on the ground in any case.  “Can we go now?” he asked, seeming a bit happier since Ron and Hermione were so excited.

“You may,” she told him.  “But come back if you have any problems.”

“We’ll make sure he does,” Ron said, as Hermione nodded along, her afro bobbing fervently as she did so.

“Alright- have a nice Saturday,” she instructed, and they agreed cheerfully as three sets of feet went pattering towards the hallway.

Harry soon remembered _why_ he didn’t want wings in the first place as all the portraits started whispering, and as soon as they came across an actual _person,_ things got even worse.

“The fuck?!” Pansy Parkinson gasped, coming back from the library after checking out a book of cosmetic spells, which she very nearly dropped when she caught sight of Harry.  “Potter, do you have _wings?!”_

“Hey, leave him alone!” Ron ordered, stepping in front of Harry protectively.

“S’alright Ron,” Harry mumbled- after all, she hadn’t said anything particularly rude to him yet.  “Yeah,” he sighed, “I got wings.”

“Well…” Pansy responded slowly, blowing a lock of hair out of her face.  “That is… something…”

“Are you gonna run off and tell your boyfriend now?” Ron asked, glaring at her, and Pansy stared at him for a full moment before she burst out laughing.

“What?” Hermione asked.  “Why on earth are you laughing?”

“Because,” Pansy gasped.  “I’m so _gay!_  I can’t believe… that you thought…” Harry began to worry that she was running out of air.

“Alright,” she sighed eventually, still shaking a bit as she held back more giggles.  “I’m okay now- just out of curiosity, Weasel, who did you think my boyfriend was?”

“Malfoy,” Harry answered, still not meeting her eyes, and another bark of laughter escaped her.

“What?” Ron snapped, still kind of offended at being called ‘Weasel.’  “Is _he_ gay too?”

“Sweetheart,” Pansy looked at him pityingly.  “Draco is the world’s palest fucking rainbow- he doesn’t know it yet, but he’s so far back in the closet he’s found fucking Narnia.”

“Wait a minute,” Hermione interrupted, looking at Pansy critically.  “How do _you_ know about Narnia?”

“What?” Pansy asked, “you didn’t think all purebloods were muggle-hating snobs, did you?  I’m a bitch, but I’m not a _racist_ bitch, geez.  My first _kiss_ was a muggle, and let me tell you, _she_ taught me some stuff...”  She whistled and fanned herself, and Harry and Ron looked at each other and made a face.

“Then how come you’re friends with _Malfoy?”_ Ron challenged eventually, and she just rolled her eyes at him.

“My mum is friends with his mum- they were kind of messing around before Draco’s mum’s parents pushed her into that marriage contract, so I kind of got stuck with him.  He’s alright though, when he’s not parroting his dumb dad. I’m working on getting him to stop being such a little arsehole, but he’s a teenage boy, so it might take a while.  He did promise me under pain of having his balls hexed off that he would never, ever, _ever_ use the m-word again, though,” she told them.

“What the bloody hell is going on here?” Ron asked.  “Harry has wings, and you’re being… well, _not_ evil?”

“Wonderfully put, Weasel, wonderfully put,” she snorted.  “But it works like this, basically- I’m part of Draco’s squad, so even when he’s being a little twat out in public, I have to support him, because that’s what Slytherins do- the rest of the school hates us, so we keep any disagreements _within_ the common room, capiche?”

“That seems… complicated…” Hermione said eventually.

“Yeah, there are some days when you do _not_ wanna be in our common room.  That’s why I got the Hufflepuff password- there’s this really cute fifth year who hooks me up with weed and I let her put her hand up my shirt.  Not great with her tongue, but we’re working on it.”

“Ew, gross, we’re _thirteen!”_ Harry exclaimed in horror, his wings fluttering as he scrunched his nose.

Pansy merely shrugged.  “I am mentally far beyond my years.  And you don’t have too much room to talk, honestly- you killed a basilisk at twelve.”

“But that’s different than _kissing_ somebody!”  Harry protested.

“A lot harder, maybe,” Pansy said dismissively.  “But whatever- you’ll get there when you get there.  I mean, you’re still pretty little if your wings are any indication.”

Harry stomped his foot angrily.  “I just got them _yesterday!”_ He protested.  “Having baby bird wings doesn’t make me little- I’m a lot older than they are!”

“Of course you are,” she agreed, patting him on the head condescendingly.  “Anyway, I’m going to go try some of these new nail-painting spells; see ya later.  Oh,” she added, almost as an afterthought. “If I’m mean to you next time I see you, don’t take it personally.  I can’t be caught being nice to Gryffindorks; it’ll ruin my reputation.”

“I’m pretty sure you weren’t being nice to us just _now,”_ Ron muttered.

“Good, then you’ve got the hang of it,” Pansy averred.  “Ta!”

“That was _weird.”_ Harry shook his head in befuddlement as she strutted away.  “And I _know_ weird.”

Ron shook his head in agreement.  “I’m honestly not sure what was _weirder-_ you growing wings, or the fact that I think we might have just made sort-of friends with Pansy Parkinson.”

“I think it’s the Pansy thing,” Hermione hummed.  “I mean, we’re _used_ to strange things happening to Harry, but _this_ is just totally unprecedented.”

“It is _quite_ unpresidented,” Ron said sagely, shaking his head.

“No Ron- _unprecedented,”_ Hermione stressed the word.

“Sorry,” Ron grumbled, cheeks lighting up.  “Sometimes your accent is kinda hard to understand; it’s so _posh.”_ Hermione was from Hampstead, which being in London, the home of some of Britain’s most polished accents, made her sound quite sophisticated even when she wasn’t trying to be.  Little Whinging was also fairly close to London, so Harry’s accent was pretty stereotypical middle-class British fare as well, even if the way he’d been treated growing up was most certainly _not._ Ottery St. Catchpole was in Devon, where the accent was a little more colloquial, so there was the occasional misunderstanding between the three of them (although they _all_ had trouble understanding Seamus at times; they were pretty sure that all the Scottish kids at Hogwarts had a club where they just met to plot on how to best confuse the rest of them).

“You just don’t like big words,” Hermione said, rolling her eyes at him fondly.

“I know a normal amount of words for kids our age; you just know too many,” Ron quipped back at her.  They walked in playful banter like this for a while and thankfully didn’t run into anyone else until they got to the common room, where the fat lady looked at Harry curiously.

“Well, that’s new,” she remarked.  Harry, embarrassed, curled his wings up around his shoulders as he hunched down, something he previously didn’t realise he could do.

“He’s a little shy about it,” Hermione explained to the portrait.  “We don’t even know quite what happened.”

“I imagine you’ll be going to the library later, hmm dear?” the portrait asked her, and Hermione nodded eagerly, her eyes lighting up despite the fact that her expression was perplexed.

“Yes,” she agreed absently, already lost in her head.  “Although, to the best we can figure, it didn’t come from _either_ of his parents, so I’ve no idea where to start…”

“Well, inheritance isn’t the _only_ way to get some sort of creature magic,” the lady in the portrait mused.  “If I were you, I’d start by looking at creatures that don’t avoid humans; sometimes, in very rare situations, there have been instances where a wizard was gifted with a specific strain of magic for providing aid to a creature.  Rumour has it that Salazar Slytherin got _his_ parselmouth abilities because his father saved a boomslang in distress, who then offered him and his descendents the gift as a boon.  You’re a parselmouth, aren’t you, dear?” she asked Harry, who nodded slowly, still hiding behind his wings.

“Yes, makes sense,” she nodded.  “There are lots of magical snakes in India; very powerful ones.  One of your ancestors must have done one a great favour once. That could be a clue to the wings issue as well; after all, if your father and _his_ father weren’t parselmouths and yet the ability runs in the family, it could be a sign of the magic skipping generations.”

“So maybe we ought to look back then, see if a Potter somewhere down the line saved a bird of some sort…” Hermione trailed off, but Violet shook her head.

“I’ve been here for two hundred years, and I’ve _never_ seen any Potters with wings; and they’ve all gone here, even though they lived in India- it’s a proud Potter tradition, going to Hogwarts.  No, if you want to find the key to _this,”_ she waved her hand at Harry,  “I’d start more recently, by looking at the lives of his parents and grandparents: anything you can find.  I’d start with Euphemia, honestly- since we know the least about her. If she’d saved a bird back in her homeland, maybe it gifted a power to her descendents that just now appeared.  If nothing turns up there, I’d try looking for information on Fleamont and then move down to James and Lily. But any farther than that won’t help you at all; gifts from a creature rarely manifest more than two generations down the line for the first inheritor.”  

“It might help if we knew more about what’s going on with Harry, too…” the black girl muttered to herself.   _“Here!”_ she declared, moving so quickly that she nearly smacked Ron in the face when she went rifling through her bag.  “Take this,” she told the redhead, handing him a spare leatherbound journal, “and anything that happens in the dorms, record it.  I’ll have one too, to mark down what happens to Harry when we’re all together, and maybe that information will help us get somewhere.”

“Such a smart girl,” Violet cooed, as she opened the portrait, forgetting to even ask them for a password.  Harry slowly sighed and inched his wings back to their standard positioning, not looking forward to the volley of questions that he was surely about to receive.

All heads turned to them, and Harry couldn’t help it; he shielded himself with the wings again, despite the fact that it made the appendages themselves far more prominent.

“What _happened_ to you, Har?” Dean asked eventually, and a mumbled “grew wings,” could be heard from the small teen himself, still hiding.

“Well we can _see_ that, dear brother,” George said, sliding up, Fred banking Harry in on the other side as they each threw an arm around him, simply acting like the wings weren’t even there as they gave him a gentle squeeze.  “What we _mean_ to say is, how did this come about?”

“Dunno,” Harry answered quietly, slowly moving one downy appendage aside to peek at the twins.  “Just woke up an’ they were coming through. Madame Pomfrey can’t figure out why.”

“Can you _fly?”_ Seamus asked, barrelling closer.  Ron put a hand on his chest to push him back a bit; Harry was flammable, and it could only be assumed that his wings were even more so.  Ron didn’t want to risk it.

“He’s not supposed to try until his feathers come in,” Hermione informed the room at large.  “Right now he’s just got the down that you see on new chicks.”

“Awww,” Angelina Johnson came up, fondly ruffling his hair.  “As if you weren’t _already_ too cute for your own good.”

“Yeah, but can he still play quidditch?” Oliver cried out, and Katie Bell smacked him, since her girlfriend was too far away.

“Would you _stop_ thinking about quidditch for one second?” she asked him.  “This is a big life adjustment for Harry!”

“I mean, there’s nowhere in the rules that says winged players _can’t_ play quidditch,” Fred pointed out reasonably, when Harry tensed at the idea that he might be forced off the team.  The little seeker relaxed minutely, and George nodded in approval.

“D’you think Snape’s gonna wanna harvest him for potions ingredients?” Neville asked with a gulp, still quite afraid of the professor, certain that he was going to return to his normal churlish ways any moment now.

“Neville, that’s _illegal,”_ Hermione assured him.  The chubby blonde let out a huge sigh of relief, glad his friend wouldn’t be part of the mangled mix that he’d surely brew next class.

“When you start growing feathers, can we practice our levitation charms on them?” a random first year cried out.

“No,” Ron answered before anyone else had a chance to say anything.  “Absolutely not.” The first year sighed- he was pretty sure that _Harry Potter’s_ feathers would have been the key to a good grade.

“Harry?” Ginny’s tentative voice came from behind him, and the teen jumped a bit.  “Are you okay?” She’d gotten a bit more comfortable around him after he’d saved her life, and after dealing with the aftereffects of the trauma all summer, she knew what a big deal these major life changes could be, even if Harry’s were a lot different from hers.

Harry turned around to face her, noting with just a bit of envy that she’d shot up over the summer and was now nearly two inches taller than he was.

“I think I will be,” he replied, giving her a small smile as the rest of the crowd eventually went back to whatever they were doing, seeing that Harry was flanked protectively by his group of friends and that they’d be given no chance to pester him with questions at the moment.  “What about you? How are you doing after… well, after everything?”

“I think I’m getting better,” Ginny responded eventually, in a low voice.  “My dad said the muggles talk to people about these things, so he’s been taking me to see a healer.  They were kind of confused at first, since they’re a neurologist that normally deals with magical head injuries, but even having someone to listen has been really nice.”

“That’s good,” Harry agreed.  “And hey- maybe they’ll realize that wizards need therapists too and someone will eventually learn to do that.”

“Some places _do_ have mind healers,” Ginny informed him.  “But we don’t really have them here; the closest one is in France, but we couldn’t afford to do that every week.  The bloke I’m talking to know is doing it for free because my dad de-enchanted a pocket watch for him once, and I think da already feels bad that that was all he could give me.  But I’m getting better.”

“I’m really happy for you,” Harry told her, and she looked at him fondly.  She’d mostly gotten over her crush on him during the summer, and now she thought that they could be really good friends.  And Harry understood what it was like to have you-know-who messing with his life, so he was one of the few people she felt comfortable talking about it with.

Eventually, it was time to go to lunch, and George, Fred, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny continued to form a protective barrier around him as they reached the Great Hall, and it occurred to Harry only as Professor McGonagall’s eyes caught onto him that he’d forgotten that he had a guardian he could have talked to about this, since he hadn’t seen her since Friday evening before this whole thing started.

“Poppy told me what happened,” she informed him as she came down to the table, not sounding mad at all that he hadn’t come to her yet.  She put up a muffliato charm so they could talk in private. “I just wanted to check on you and make sure you were doing okay.”

“Er, I think so,” Harry muttered, still not quite sure how to deal with adults looking at him in concern.  “I uh… it only happened last night, or else I would have, er, made sure to tell you about it…”  
“It’s alright dear,” she assured him, ruffling his hair.  “I’m sure you had a lot of other things on your mind, and I should have made sure to check after you Saturday, but I thought you were just enjoying your weekend and might want a little time with your friends anyway after I was with you all summer,  and I got a little caught up in marking. I’ll make sure to do better next time.”

Harry wasn’t quite sure how to take this; his head of house was _apologising_ when she hadn’t really done anything wrong, as far as he could figure.  He didn’t want her to feel bad though.

“S’alright,” he mumbled.  “You don’t have to look after me _all_ the time…”

“I’m your _parent,_ dear; it’s my job,” she reminded him.  “It’s just that I know that you’re a teenager and might want your space, but I should also know that you might have trouble coming to me for help after everything that you’ve grown up with.  I’m trying to find a balance that works for us, and in the meantime, please know that you can talk to me about _anything_ and I won’t be upset; I promise.”

“Er, thanks professor… Minerva…” he forced out, noting the way her eyes lit up when he used her first name.  

“No problem, darling,” she said tenderly, taking down the muffliato charm and ruffling his hair affectionately.  She wanted to kiss him on the forehead, but she worried that might embarrass him when he was already getting enough unwanted attention today, so she just squeezed his hand softly and headed back to her own lunch, trusting Hermione to make sure Harry’s plate was full so she didn’t make him self-conscious by lingering there fussing over him.

“Oh, hello Harry,” Luna came over from the Ravenclaw table, sitting down and taking a plate.  “Nice to see you.” She wasn’t acting any differently than she always did, and Harry knew he should be confused but really just felt grateful.

“Hi Luna,” he greeted back.

“Your wings are very pretty,” she told him, finally bringing up the elephant in the room.  “I was wondering when they were going to come through.”

“Wait,” Harry gasped, suddenly dropping his fork, which clattered against the table.   _“You knew?!”_

“The moonsong always liked to hang around you,” she shrugged, as if it were obvious.  “It obviously thought you were special, although I bet they hurt quite a bit pushing out.”

“Wait, Luna,” Hermione asked, for once looking at the girl completely seriously.  “Do you know anything else?”

“No, I’m really sorry,” she murmured dreamily.  “I can only say what I see, but I _did_ notice that there are less nargles in this generally area than usual.”

Hermione looked at the little blonde girl critically, seeming to see her in a different light as she scribbled something in her notebook.

“What’s moonsong?” Harry asked, not protesting when the younger Ravenclaw gently put a hand in his direction, silently asking for permission to touch.

“It’s all the good things she sends in our direction,” Luna explained, nibbling on a carrot.  “The pretty things, the light and joyful things. They like to gather around you. Sometimes she sends bad things too,” the girl sighed, the corner of one languid eye darting quickly towards the staff table, so nearly evanescent that it went unnoticed by all but Professor Lupin, who tensed slightly.  “But that’s not her fault,” she continued. “The moon is a good thing, but there has to be darkness everywhere, or else the light would have nothing to push away.”

Hermione was now looking at Luna intently, taking down every word she said in her notes.  She’d thought that she was too fanciful at first, still in the imaginative phase of childhood that some people just never quite grew out of, but it was clear that she was onto something, now.  They had their first divination class tomorrow as well; perhaps that would add something to her comprehension of the situation (it would not).

_______________

Severus Snape stared down at Lily’s son attentively, wondering _how in the world_ the boy had sprouted wings.  Beyond that, however, he was worried that it would make him more of a target.  Besides the obvious problem of hiding them from muggles (which would have to be figured out at _some point_ before next summer, as surely Minerva would want to take him out to do some of the things he’d never gotten to do as a child), if whatever still remained of the dark lord were to catch wind of this… well, the point was that Harry Potter was now more mysterious than ever, and it was not good, not with so many people who wished the boy harm- including Sirius Black, who was on the loose right now.  Even if his own feelings on the little teen were so jumbled at the moment (he was clearly a lot less like his father than Severus had assumed, and he’d been seeing more and more of his mother in him. He’d treated him terribly, furthermore, and his own guilt on the matter was something he didn’t quite know how to deal with yet). Nonetheless, he’d made a promise to Lily, and he intended to keep it, even if it killed him.

Meanwhile, Remus Lupin was also deep in thought.  The full moon the night before had been a rough one even with the wolfsbane that Severus was required to make him, and he’d found himself barely capable of dragging himself off of the floor of his office to get dressed and come down to lunch, but he didn’t want to arouse suspicion this early in the year; he’d have a hard enough time explaining all his illnesses during the full moons that fell during the school weeks.  

But as soon as little Harry entered, he felt the aching leave his joints, and he found himself feeling nearly as good as he did in the middle of the month, when he was farthest from the wolf.  He wasn’t sure what to do with this information, but it definitely bore watching. Tomorrow he would have his first practical lesson of the year, and he was curious to see how all the children would manage.  He was debating about what to do with Harry during that lesson, if he were honest- at first he’d thought that the child who used to call him Uncle Moony would have a boggart that turned out to be Voldemort, but then the boy hadn’t been on the train, and there had been dementors hunting through for… for _Sirius_ (and the name still sent such a pang through his heart, of what he’d thought was such a pure love turning into this terrible betrayal).  

And it hadn’t escaped his notice that Harry was so much smaller and thinner than he’d expected him to be- his father had been lanky, but he’d been tall as well, and Harry wasn’t _lanky,_ he was clearly malnourished.  Then he’d heard that Professor McGonagall had taken custody of him, and he’d gone to her to ask about it, had found out that Albus had placed his sweet little boy with _the Dursleys,_ and the wolf had nearly come tearing out right then and there.  The only thing keeping him from rushing up to the headmaster’s office to hex him into oblivion was the thought that he needed to be here to keep an eye on Harry with everything going on.  And then the child showed up to lunch with wings and an aura that soothed the wolf far better than even the wolfsbane Severus had made, and he just couldn’t make any sense of it.

_______

September the first had been on a Wednesday this year, and they had Care of Magical Creatures on Mondays and Tuesdays, so it was the first time Hagrid was teaching the third years when the children woke up on the second week of school, excited that they could finally stop reviewing and begin doing practical lessons.  Hagrid greeted them cheerfully when they reached his hut, clapping a giant hand on Harry’s shoulder and gently stroking his right wing reverently.

“Been up since five preparing this lesson,” he told the trio of Gryffindors with a big smile on his face.  He was still _beaming_ at Harry, and he was nearly puffing with pride as he told the little Gryff that his wings were some of the most beautiful he’d ever seen.

Hagrid took them down past the hut and to a fenced in field, where Harry saw some of the most interesting creatures he’d ever seen.  They had the head and front legs of an eagle and the back end of a horse, and they were alternately grazing or gulping down large hunks of raw meat from a trough in the corner.  Harry saw Draco Malfoy eyeing them derisively, and his wings fluttered angrily- he was _up to something._

Luckily, he didn’t have to react, because Pansy was grabbing him by the arm.

“We should stay out here,” she told him snidely.  “Playing with eagle-horses is dangerous; what a _Gryffindor_ thing.”

“If _they_ can handle those dumb beasts, so can I,” Draco huffed, and one of the passing creatures, a beautiful dappled grey, swatted Malfoy angrily with his tail, sending him sprawling into a mud puddle.  As he muttered that ‘his father would hear about this’ Harry caught sight of the Slytherin girl rolling her eyes at the blonde, so quick he doubt anybody else saw.

Meanwhile, Buckbeak had already turned away from the rude little pale thing and was eyeing Harry interestedly.  Hippogriffs were very intelligent creatures, and his brain was whirring quite quickly.

 _Half bird,_ he thought, referring to himself.  Then he turned a big yellow eye to Harry.   _Also half-bird.  I have son._

Harry found himself being hauled over the fence by a beak grabbing hold of his robes, and he was very startled when he suddenly found that same beak snuffing at his hair, trying to put some order into it.  Then the hippogriff was gently combing Harry’s wings with his beak, so all the fluff was pointing the same direction.

“Hagrid?” he called, trying not to sound panicked.  “What’s happening?”

“He’s performin’ groomin’ rituals on yeh,” Hagrid explained.  “The sort er ones mums and das do for their chicks. He must think yer his hatchling.”

“Oh,” Harry exhaled.  “Uh…”

“His name’s Buckbeak,” Hagrid called out, and Harry turned towards the creature.

“Listen, Buckbeak…” he began, but he didn’t get to finish, as the hippogriff was looking at him with wide, eager eyes and pushing a large hunk of raw meat towards him.  Harry made a face.

“Er, no thank you…” he declined politely.  “I’m not very hungry.”

Buckbeak cawed in apparent understanding and used his sharp beak to pull a large clump of grass out of the ground, offering it to his chick with the roots and dirt still attached.

“Er, not really…” Harry shook his head apologetically.  Buckbeak thought carefully. His son didn’t like meat, and he didn’t like grass, so he must like…

 _Ah hah!_  Buckbeak pulled a carrot out of the trough where the meat rested, his expression triumphant and almost adorable as he presented it, sure this would be the food his little picky eater would like.  Harry, realising he wasn’t going to give up, rinsed off the vegetable with an _augmenti_ charm from his wand that came out just a little too strongly and took a bite, trying not to grimace as he thought about where it had been.  The new dad _cawed_ triumphantly, watching Harry with soft aquiline eyes until it was all gone.

He picked up Harry by the robes again and held him out towards Hagrid proudly, as if saying _look, big human!  Look at my son!_

Harry’s face flushed in embarrassment as he realised that Malfoy and his goons were laughing at him, and even Pansy was chuckling madly, although with far less genuine malice.  They really didn’t get to do too much actual learning that day, but Harry was relieved when they bell rang, turning to Buckbeak.

“Er, I gotta go,” he told him.  “I have classes and stuff…”

Buckbeak tried to flatten his hair one last time before shoving him gently forward.  He made a sound which roughly translated to _go, my son, and learn the ways of the universe; I’ll be waiting with snacks when you come home!_


	4. Chapter 3

The rest of the day was slightly less weird; Trelawney predicted his death, Professor McGonagall turned into a cat, and Harry had to put up with a lot of good-natured ribbing about ‘wasn’t it ironic that he, a bird, had been adopted by a cat?’  Hagrid had asked him to _please come down to his hut for a minute after dinner,_ where he’d found Buckbeak waiting for him, and what must have been all of the carrots in Hagrid’s garden piled up in what was clearly a newly-constructed nest, just Harry’s size.  He’d then had to explain to the hippogriff that he, Harry, was the type of bird who slept inside the castle, and Buckbeak had nodded in apparent understanding as he gave Harry his blessing to leave.  However, as soon as Harry had emerged from the showers, carefully patting his wings dry, he found Buckbeak sitting on his bed in a nest-like construction of blankets, nickering proudly. Harry didn’t really have the heart to tell him to leave, so with a sigh he just pulled out a book and climbed into bed next to the creature.

He’d found out fairly quickly that whatever he had turned into did not require a lot of sleep, as he was usually awake for most of the night before catching an hour or two towards dawn and waking up refreshed, so he’d carefully read from one of his textbooks next to the slumbering hippogriff before eventually turning onto his belly (his new sleeping position, ever since he’d grown the wings) and curling up for his daily cat nap (and oh, _there’s_ the irony again…)

“Alright Buckbeak,” he told the eagle-horse, “you really gotta go back to Hagrid’s now.”  Buckbeak nodded and flew out the open window.

“You know he’s just gonna come back tonight?” Ron laughed, and Harry sighed.

“Yeah, _I know,”_ he responded.  “Guess I’ll just get used to sharing my bed.”  It wasn’t like he really needed it all that much anyway since he’d stopped needing a full eight hours, so he reminded himself that it could be worse as he went to get out of bed.

And just then, it got worse.  The weight of his wings on his back that Harry had slowly gotten used to over the last few days was suddenly heavier, and Harry nearly toppled backwards before, overcompensating, he tipped forward onto his front.

“Ron!” he called, face in the carpet.  “I think they grew!” His wings were flapping frantically as he tried to right himself, and his dorm mates were cackling wildly as the redhead came to help him up.

“Here, take your potions,” he reminded Harry as his best friend wobbled tipsily as he tried to readjust his equilibrium.  “Oh wow, they’re down to your mid-thigh now,” he remarked, getting a good look at the still-fluffy appendages sprouting from Harry’s shoulder blades.

“They’re heavy,” Harry grunted, as he nearly tripped again.  “I feel all clumsy and awkward.”

“This is what you get for laughing at me when I went through that growth spurt last year,” Ron teased unsympathetically, and Harry glared at him crankily (and adorably, it couldn’t help but be noticed).

“I was only chuckling a little bit,” he protested.   _“Hermione_ was the one nearly rolling on the floor!”

“Whatever,” Ron rolled his eyes.  “C’mon, let’s get to breakfast. Professor Lupin says we get to have our first DADA practical lesson today.”

________

When they got to Defence, there was a big, rattling wardrobe in the corner.  Harry looked at the professor curiously, wondering what he had planned as he sat down and took out his textbooks.  Lupin, for his part, felt his body sag in relief the moment Harry walked through the door. While he was always happy to see his cub, this was on a purely physical level; even when the wolf was quiet, Remus could still feel it there, connected to his magic and trying to feed off his energy.  Ever since Harry had grown wings, Moony felt like the closest he’d ever felt to truly free of his lycanthropy was when his cub was close by.

“Hey professor,” Harry greeted, coming closer to the wardrobe to examine it carefully as Remus felt the wolf stretch out languidly, the feeling almost pleasant for him.  He was quite shocked; he’d _never_ gotten along with it, but now it was just lying back like a well-behaved little puppy.  He stepped back a couple of steps, making as if to grab something from his desk, and he felt the beast merely go neutral again.  He picked up the book he pretended to need and stepped closer to Harry again, and the wolf reacted pleasantly, curling up in his chest almost affectionately as it basked in whatever it was about Harry’s presence that pleased it so.  Remus had to admit that he found himself completely and totally nonplussed.

“Professor?” Harry’s voice broke through his racing thoughts.  “Are you alright? You’ve got a really weird look on your face.”

“Oh, I’m sorry Harry,” Remus shook himself.  “I was merely lost in thought. How are you today?”

“They got bigger; it’s weird,” Harry told him, fluttering his wings for emphasis.  A gentle breeze wafted through the immediate area, and Remus felt Moony stretch his nose towards it, rolling over on his belly and filling him with a deep sense of comfort and satisfaction.

“They’re very lovely, though,” Remus forced his mind to stay in the present as he stretched a hand towards one of the wings, silently asking Harry’s permission.  Harry stretched it out towards him, and as his finger’s brushed the tip there was a jolt of electricity that ran from Harry’s wing down his fingers and then through his body like cool water.  In the part of him where Moony resided, Remus felt almost like someone had flipped a switch the right way round as the wolf stretched out and gave a pleasant little howl that only he could hear.  And then there was an odd sensation like the physical feeling of claws being pulled out of his core as Moony found whatever it was that he’d been looking for and stopped trying to _control_ Remus, instead ceding authority completely to him.  In a pulse that nearly knocked him breathless, his senses sharpened further.  

His senses had always been more developed than the average wizard’s, one of the few parts of his lycanthropy that he didn’t abhor, but now he could make out each miniscule crack in the wall, each thread on Harry’s robes, and every grain in the wood of the wardrobe holding the bogart with his eyes, sharper than they’d ever been.  Even though the kitchen was nearly halfway across the castle, Remus could smell everything, from the blueberry pies the elves were bringing out of the oven to every clove of garlic in the pantry, and his ears picked up the rest of his class as they giggled and eagerly discussed the lesson from halfway down the hall.

 _“Whoa,”_ Harry breathed.  “Did you feel that?”

“Yes, cub, yes I did,” Remus told him, still adjusting to this new reality.  “And I think I have some idea of what went on, but I can’t explain right now.  If you and your friends stay after class, I can talk to you then.” There was no point leaving Ron and Hermione out of this, as they’d been standing in the back of the room watching carefully, there eyes wide as they, too, had felt the throbbing cadence of magic that swept the room when Remus’ fingers had touched Harry’s wings.

Speaking of his wings, they seemed very pleased with themselves, fluttering contentedly as Harry went to sit down next to Ron and Hermione and they all shared astonished looks.  Harry could still feel the tingle of cool magic in the room, his wings sensitive to every fluctuation of whatever they had created. One of them brushed Ron’s side, but nothing out of the ordinary happened, merely a slight quiver of affection.  Hermione was scribbling madly in her notebook, her dark hand a blur on the paper.

She didn’t even stop writing when Professor Lupin asked them, still somewhat dazed, what a boggart was, and the rest of the class looked at her in confusion as Pansy Parkinson answered instead, nearly preening in satisfaction when she received five points for Slytherin for the correct answer.  Ron glared at any non-Slytherin student who looked at Hermione in disappointment, refusing to accept any animosity towards his friend. She’d been there for him when Scabbers had disappeared over the weekend, even casting a spell over Crookshanks to see if he’d had something to do with it (he hadn’t- the spell showed no contact with any rat over the last twenty-four hours, the timeframe in which Scabbers disappeared).  She was even thinking of ways to help him find his pet, despite the fact that they’d squabbled about her cat before. He wasn’t going to stand any disrespect towards her. Besides, if they didn’t want Pansy to win points for Slytherin, they should have answered themselves.

“Yes, that is correct,” Lupin continued, pointing towards the rattling chest.  “A boggart manifests as your worst fear, and the charm to combat it is…”

“Riddikulus.”  Hermione had finally stopped writing and raised her hand.

“Yes, that is correct as well,” the professor praised as he awarded five points to Gryffindor.  “The charm is not all, however. Since the best way to fight a boggart is laughter, you have to visually _picture_ something that would make that fear seem funny or paltry.  For example, Neville,” he called, turning to the boy, who blushed and looked like he wanted to disappear into the floor.  “What are you most afraid of?”

“Professor Snape,” he mumbled, inaudible to anyone else but easily understandable to Remus with his better-than-ever hearing.

“Ah yes,” he agreed, nodding stoically.  “Professor Snape is rather scary, and I doubt very many of us would have the inner fortitude to go face our worst fear day in and day out like you do,” he pointed out.  Neville perked up just a little, as if he had never considered this aspect of it, and some of the others in the class seemed to be looking at him with a new respect. After all, no matter what you are afraid of, the sensation of fear is still sickening, and the ability to face up against it should never be undervalued.

“Tell me Neville,” he said, turning on his heel again and making a real performance of the thing, “What does your grandmother usually wear?”

“Er, a long fur coat, and a big leather purse, and a hat with a vulture on it,” the Gryffindor answered.  “But why…”

“Well, I suppose Professor Snape would seem a lot less terrifying in something like that, now wouldn’t he?” Remus mused, his inner Marauder cackling at the thought of what he was about to do.

“Well, I suppose most people would,” Neville agreed (his grandmother was the only one who could really make it look scary).

“Alright, so when you cast the charm, you need to think about Snape, dressed like that,” Moony instructed, and Harry and Ron looked at each other and smiled widely- their new professor was _dressing Snape in drag;_ how awesome was that?!

When Snape not as he had been behaving recently but the Snape that they had always known and hated came out of the wardrobe, stalking towards Neville with his wand raised, the boy was shaking but ready.

“R-riddikulus!” he stammered, and the potions professor took on his new vestments, looking very displeased indeed.

“Excellent,” Remus commended.  “Alright, who’s next?” he asked, turning to the class at large.  “Harry, I’m going to ask that you not go today, as I can only imagine that having Vo- He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named show up in the classroom might be a bit too frightening for a first lesson."

Harry nodded- he didn’t think his boggart would have been Voldemort, but he appreciated not having to have the whole class looking at him as Uncle Vernon bore down on him waving his belt around, even if it _would_ be funny to see him turn into a walrus in a too-tight suit.

Ron went next, and Harry and Hermione beamed proudly as the spider lost all its legs, rendering it quite useless.  They watched as Seamus gave a banshee laryngitis, Parvati turned a cobra’s fangs into baby carrots, and Pansy just strode up to a large flashing sign with the word _No!_ on it and blasted it into pieces.

The problem was that by the time that they were ready to finish the boggart off, Remus had forgotten to consider that with Moony behaving thanks to Harry, he was no longer afraid of the full moon.

He was therefore not prepared for a younger, cleaner, smiling Sirius Black to be standing in the room, looking at him in that way that used to make his knees go weak.  He heard the screams of some of the pureblood students as they realized what was going on, but he wasn’t truly _aware_ of them as the man that he thought was going to be his ‘til death do us part’ put a hand gently on his cheek, sending shivers down Remus’ spine.

“Hello luv,” he whispered, in the same husky voice that made Moony’s stomach melt into a puddle of useless goo.  His easy grin was as captivating as ever, and Remus knew he should end this, end this _now,_ but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to raise his arm.

“Would you like to pick up where we left off?” Padfoot teased, leaning down to gently nip Remus’ jawline.  He needed to stop, to raise his wand, to look him in the face and tell him this was over, but he was frozen, the same way prongs used to be when they would shine their wandlight in his eyes as a joke.

The class was silent now, captivated, and Harry wondered what was going on and what they should do about it when Neville stepped forward, hands shaking.

“Go away!” he yelled at the Sirius look-alike, as it turned towards him and changed back into Snape.  “Get out of here!” He cast the riddikulus charm again, and Snape briefly became the world’s worst drag queen again before he burst into dust, the boggart gone.  Their professor stood there, tears in his eyes, looking at the place where Sirius had been.

 _No,_ he reminded himself, biting back a sob.   _Not Sirius; there will never be Sirius again._

“Class dismissed,” he choked, and most of them left, all except for the golden trio.  Harry stood there, wings flitting anxiously, his eyes glued to the pile of dust that had once been the boggart.

“Professor?” he asked timidly.  “Would you like to talk about it?”

“Not really,” Remus answered, running a hand through his sandy, grey-peppered hair.  “But I suppose I must.”

He took a deep breath, sitting behind his desk.  The others took the cue and hoisted themselves up on the table in front of it, Harry using his wings to gather momentum since he was too short to manage on his own.  He lifted them a little higher so they wouldn’t brush the table before folding them in, waiting patiently with his two best friends to hear what he had to tell them.

“Long ago, a good ten years before you all were born, there were four Gryffindors who did everything together.  One of them was an outcast, with a terrible secret he was afraid they would discover. He was a werewolf, and every month he would give his new friends excuses as to why he hadn’t been there- there was a family emergency, he’d caught a cold, his mother was ill.  Eventually, these excuses were no longer enough, and the other three discovered. Instead of casting the fourth friend out, however, they accepted him, doing everything they could to make full moons more comfortable…” he couldn’t quite bring himself to tell them about the animagus bit yet, he wasn’t sure why, but it didn’t really matter anyway, not right now.  “They called themselves Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs, and they were thick as thieves and often not too much better-behaved. Prongs fell in love with a girl, another Gryffindor like them, but she wanted nothing to do with him. But he kept trying, improving his behaviour and becoming a better person for her until one day, she asked _him_ out.  By the time the friends had graduated from Hogwarts, they were firmly in love.  

“Meanwhile, Moony and Padfoot were two great big idiots who couldn’t seem to communicate properly with each other, until one day Padfoot did something so monumentally stupid that it forced them to talk about their feelings.  Come graduation, they were just as in love as Prongs and his flower, and things would have been perfect, if only there wasn’t a dark wizard trying to destroy everything they believed in. So even as Prongs and his flower got married, they were all forced to grow up too fast, to put their lives on the line for their cause.  But they were young and free and sure of themselves, and they thought everything would somehow turn out alright. Until Prongs and his flower got pregnant despite doing everything they could to put it off until the war was over. But they had a baby and named Padfoot the godfather, so they had to go into hiding to keep their family safe.  The dark wizard felt threatened by Prongs and his flower, so they had to perform a spell called the Fidelius Charm to keep themselves safe. Yes, Hermione?” Remus couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow, amused, as the girl gasped. “Would you like to tell us what it is?”

“The Fidelius charm is a powerful spell that relies on a secret keeper that has been chosen by the participants.  Once the spell is performed, the secret is hidden so firmly that only the secret keeper can divulge the information, and he can only do it voluntarily.  Not even torture can make him tell unless he chooses to,” she lectured them.

“Very good,” the professor told her.  “So they decided to perform the Fidelius charm, and Padfoot would be their secret keeper.  They were so sure they were safe, but Padfoot had done something terrible; he had changed sides.  He betrayed them, and the dark wizard came to kill them. Prongs and his flower gave their lives protecting the baby, and the dark wizard was defeated that night.  Wormtail tried to confront Padfoot, but Padfoot killed him and the dozen muggles in the street. Padfoot went to Azkaban, Wormtail and Prongs were dead, and Moony was alone for twelve long years.  His lycanthropy was hard on him, but eventually he got a job teaching at Hogwarts, where he once again met the child of his old friends. That child is special, a little boy with wings who just this morning finally freed Moony from the wolf that had tortured him for so long, turning it docile and allowing him to finally take control again.  And Moony knew that he owed this boy the story.”

There was silence, all-encompassing silence that felt heavy with the weight of old pain and new discoveries, before Harry eventually spoke.

“Oh...” he said in a small voice.  “Sirius Black was my godfather.”

“And your boyfriend,” Hermione sighed.

“And you were a werewolf,” Ron added, “but now you’re…”

“A werewolf who has control of the wolf, I suppose,” Remus exhaled tiredly.  “Although I suppose that isn’t even your biggest concern at the moment.”

“I… I had a godfather,” Harry cried in a small, anguished voice.  “And he… he be-betray…” he had to stop here, choking back a sob. “He betrayed us,” he finished, looking at Remus.  “He betrayed _all_ of us…”

“I never even saw it coming,” Remus said, sounding _so_ tired, tired enough for a hundred lifetimes.  “He was my everything, and I didn’t even know who he was…”

“You can’t blame yourself,” Hermione told him, her voice rational.  “It sounded like nobody did, nobody in the world…”

“If anyone could have, it would have been me,” Remus maintained vehemently.  “But I hadn’t even a suspicion, and I will _never_ forgive myself for that.”

“Well, _I_ forgive you,” Harry swore, his voice full of conviction as he put one small brown hand over Remus’ suntanned, tired one.  “Is that enough?”

“Oh cub,” Remus murmured, stepping forward and softly enveloping Harry in a hug.  “It’s _more_ than enough, but I should have been enough for you, and I wasn’t.”  And then he was crying, crying like a child as he held Harry in his arms, rocking back and forth and wondering if things could ever be right again.


	5. Chapter 4

The Golden Trio (as most of the school had taken to calling them, either fondly or derisively) was spending the weekend holed up in the library, poring through old, dusty tomes to try to find some clue as to what might have caused Harry’s creature transformation.  Ron’s elbow was set against the table, his chin propped under his fist as his eyes roved lethargically over the dense, small text of the book he was reading.

“Any luck?” Hermione asked the two of them, shutting another book in frustration.

“Nope,” Harry remarked before sneezing as the light fluttering of his wings dislodged some dust from the shelves.

“Well, I was thinking that maybe we should-” Hermione was _about_ to say that maybe they should try a different section, but their attention was distracted by Harry’s rubbing up against the corner of one of the shelves, seemingly unaware that he was doing it.

“Uh, mate?” Ron began tentatively.  “What are you doing?”

“Hmmm?” Harry asked, looking up at them, still rubbing his wings up and down against the wood, his face dazed as a pleased chirping noise warbled from the back of his throat.

“Er, why are you… you know… humping the shelves?”

“Oh…” Harry’s face suddenly reddened a bit as he realised what he was doing, but he didn’t stop.  “Dunno… I just gotta.”

“Aww,” Hermione cooed, coming up behind him and gently touching a wing with her finger.  “I think your pin feathers are coming in!”

“What’s that?” Harry asked, readjusting to rub a different part of his wings, near the top.

“Pin feathers are sort of like your intermediary feathers- they’re little feather shafts that come in after your down, and then they slowly lengthen and develop to form your real feathers.  The pin feather on a baby bird also has a large part of the blood supply from the wings flowing through it.”

“Interesting,” Harry murmured.  “Feels weird…” Fluffy down floated to the floor around them, and Hermione gently stroked one of the hollow tubes coming in at the wing tips.

“Oh!” Harry gasped.  “That tickles!” His wing nearly upset a number of books on the shelves as he jerked reflexively, and Madame Pince came to check on the source of the commotion.  When she did, she found Harry sitting on the floor, surrounded by a small pile of fluffy down and with one wing bent towards his face as he curiously examined the tiny pin feathers that were at the moment only on the outer edges of the appendages.

“I’d scold you,” she sighed, “but I raised parrots for years, and I know how itchy and uncomfortable it can be when your pin feathers are coming in.”

“Mmhmm,” Harry shook his head shyly, his wings fluttering along with the movement.

“Here,” she came up behind him, “this always helped with my birds.”  She held a hand above his wing, making sure he was alright with her touching it before she continued, moving her fingers gently in a circular motion along the edges of the right one, where the down met the new developing feathers, and Harry let out a musical little _“ooh!”_ as he sighed in pleasure.

“That feels so nice,” he sighed, yawning as the librarian helped stimulate the blood flow in his wings.  They gave the slightest little tired flap as his eyes drooped, and more fluff was dislodged beneath Madame Pince’s fingernails.

“Come,” she told the other two, beckoning them over to watch her movements.  “This is good for him, and it’s also very relaxing. Whenever you find him starting to rub up against a tree trunk or a piece of furniture, just gently rub his wings like I’m showing you now to help him along.”

“Thank you,” Harry whispered drowsily as his eyes fluttered all the way closed.

“Of course dear,” she murmured, finding herself endeared to the small, adorable teenager just like so many others.  She turned to Ron and Hermione again.

“Normally I don’t approve of sleeping in my library,” she told them, “but if you’d like to continue your research while he dozes for a bit, I suppose I could make an exception.”

“Thank you ma’am,”  Hermione replied primly as the librarian conjured a large pouf and gently lifted Harry to place him on it so he wouldn’t get a crick in his neck during his nap.

“He’s so light you’d think his bones actually _were_ hollow,” she murmured in dissatisfaction as she felt his weight.  “I should certainly _hope_ that Poppy has him on nutrient potions…”

“She does,” Ron informed her, putting a heavy book carefully back on the shelf and reaching for another.  “Ugh, I have absolutely _no_ idea where to start with this…”

“Neither do I, unfortunately,” the librarian sighed.  “I’ve read quite a lot about magical creatures, but I’ve never seen anything like this- we might be look at something completely unprecedented.”

“He’s Harry,” Hermione sighed fondly, pushing a loose bit of hair out of his eyes.   _“Of course_ we’re looking at something unprecedented.”

________

“Potter,” Snape sighed, carefully keeping his voice neutral as he pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.  The little winged teen looked up, eyes wide and startled as he faced the professor.

“Yes sir?” he asked, his tone clearly anxious, his wings fluttering in response.  Which brought Snape back to the original problem.

“You’re shedding feathers into the cauldron behind you.”  The man exhaled deeply, clearly trying his absolute best to conserve his patience.

“Oh!” Harry gasped, jumping up from his stool and scattering more down.  “Merlin, I’m sorry Seamus!” The Irish boy had been brewing with Dean behind him, and they were absorbed so deeply in conversation they hadn’t been paying any attention to their assignment.

“It’s alright Potter,” their teacher said, cutting into Harry’s frantic flurry of apologies.  “I suppose you cannot help your… whatever is happening, and if Thomas and Finnegan had been paying attention, this wouldn’t have been an issue.  They can redo their potion in detention this evening.” Both Gryffindors grumbled under their breath as they pulled the cauldron off the heat, but Snape wasn’t paying attention, squatting down to examine a bit of the down.

“I’ll stay after class to sweep it up,” Harry offered, eyeing the man warily.  

“There’s no need, Potter.  I was merely examining their properties.”  He himself suddenly looked a bit awkward as he cleared his throat.  “Would you… would you mind greatly if I kept a few to examine their properties?”

“Go ahead,”  Harry shrugged.  “I don’t need them anymore.  Here- I’ve probably got quite a few more coming loose.”  At these words, Ron jumped ahead, and Harry didn’t even need to ask, as his best friend was already gently rubbing his wings to help the fluff loosen, and he slumped in bliss like he always did when someone was helping the process along.  More fluffy baby feathers drifted to the floor, raining down in fuzzy little clouds.

“What’s happening here?” Padma, ever the curious Ravenclaw, had put her own potion on stasis and tiptoed forward, carefully stepping around their volatile teacher.  “What are those?” She pointed to the edge of Harry’s left wing.

“Those are his pin feathers,” Hermione explained.  “They’re the start of his adult feathers.” More and more were slowly growing in, although they were almost as fluffy as the down.  It wasn’t until they grew and lengthened that they would be smooth and sleek like a normal bird’s.

“They’re still really _cute,_ though,” Padma murmured, holding her fingers back from reaching out to touch them with some difficulty.

 _“Hey!”_ Harry interjected indignantly, turning from where he’d just finished a round of stirring his and Ron’s potion to glare at the other Indian teen.  “They are _not!”_  They were, however, quite cute, as was the disgruntled pout of the thirteen-year-old boy connected to them.

“Stop ogling Potter and go back to your potion, Ms. Patil,” Snape snapped at her, and Harry gave him a grateful look.  The Slytherin squirmed; he hadn’t been doing it to make Potter feel more comfortable- he’d merely wanted everyone to go back to work.  So why was the boy giving him a slight smile and looking at him with relief in his large green eyes, so like his mother’s but even bigger in his dark, half-starved little face?  It was merely professional interest that had him deciding he ought to talk to Pomfrey about developing a stronger nutrient potion to give to him, he told himself. Yes, purely professional.  He didn’t care for the little brat at all, no matter how endearingly innocent he looked with his fluffy white wings and his haphazard curls and his long eyelashes. He might be as cute as a tiny little puppy, but Severus Snape wasn’t affected by _puppies,_ so he _refused_ to feel any sort of protective instincts over Potter outside of those required by the promise he had made.

“Bottle your assignments and leave them on my desk,” he ordered ten minutes later as the period came to a close, carefully examining one of the feathers.  Perhaps if he could break down its properties, it would help him understand more of whatever was going on with Potter and maybe even allow for a way to glamour them, thus keeping him safer from the dark lord.  Because he’d promised Lily, of course. No other reasons.

The Weasley spawn put his and Potter’s potion on the desk and then nearly booked it out of the door, Harry and Hermione following at a more sedate pace.  Harry was last to exit, wanting to let all his other classmates leave first, as it took him a moment to fold his wings in enough to fit through the narrow doorway of the potions classroom.

“So, what do you want to do the rest of the day?” he asked his friends as they walked up the enchanted stairs.

“We should go study down by the lake,” Hermione suggested, and Harry perked up at the idea, as did his wings (which were down to his knees now).

“That sounds really nice,” he agreed, a wide smile on his face as he thought of lying on his stomach in the grass, his hair ruffling in the breeze as Ron and Hermione gently rubbed his wings (they seemed to like touching them as much as Harry currently liked having them rubbed, the texture pleasant against their fingers).

As the walked past Myrtle’s bathroom, Harry nearly tripped over a loose stone, his wings flapping rapidly as he righted himself.  The appendages were in a state of near-constant movement, actually, just like most people twitch their fingers or jiggle their knees, but the movements were sharper than usual as he kept from falling, and then there was a sharp flutter of surprise as a gush of water came flooding out.

“Looks like Myrtle’s upset about something,” Hermione noted as the water swirled around their feet.

“DAMN RIGHT I’M UPSET!  WHO’S FLOODING MY BATHROOM?!” the ghost cried, coming out.  “PEEVES, IF THAT’S YOU I SWEAR I’M GONNA- oh,” she muttered, her voice going back to its usual volume.  “It’s just you three. Did you happen to see what might have caused the water surge? Someone’s been messing about just as I was settling down for a nice afternoon in my toilet, and I’m rather irate about it, honestly- _I’m_ the only one who can flood this floor, _thank you very much!”_

“We didn’t see anything, Myrt,” Ron told the ghost, “but we’ll definitely keep an eye out.  It could have been just a normal overflow, though- sometimes that happens too.”

“Not very often, not _here,_ at least,” Myrtle huffed.  “But I appreciate it. I suppose you three have things to do, then?” she asked, her expression wistful.

“We were just going to go outside for a bit,” Harry responded.  “But you’re welcome to join us if you wish.”

Her translucent face lit up.  “I’d love to! Nobody _ever_ invites me places.”

“Well, that’s too bad for them,” Harry declared.  “Because I think you’re pretty awesome.”

“Oh Harry, you’re going to make me blush,” the ghost girl said, her cheeks already glowing silver.

“So, overhear any interesting conversations lately?” Ron teased gently, knowing the girl had a habit of sliding through walls or travelling up the pipes to look for good gossip.

She sighed.  “No, nothing- not too much going on around here, besides your wings and the Sirius Black thing, but nobody really has any new information on _those,_ and even if they did I wouldn’t go spreading them around out of respect to you.”

 _Harry_ blushed this time.  “Aww, that’s really sweet of you Myrtle…”

“Don’t mention it,” the ghost declared flippantly.  “So, what are you guys studying for?”

“Charms,” Ron answered.  “We have a quiz on Friday.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed.  “And it’s the first quiz of the year, so I’m kind of nervous…”

“You’ve been spending too much time with Mione, mate- you were doing great in class, so you’re worrying for no reason,” Ron told him fondly, pulling him to his side and ruffling his hair.

“Ron, _stop!”_ Harry cried, as his best friend’s hands moved down to tickle his sensitive sides.  

“Stop what?  This?” he asked, poking what he knew was a super-ticklish spot.

“Ugh, you’re such a prat!”  Harry declared, squealing with laughter.  “Ron, I swear!”

“Awww, is little Harry ticklish?”

“I’m not _little!”_ Harry gasped between giggles, batting at Ron with his wings as he tried to fend off the attack.  By this point they had reached the shore, and the two boys fell in a heap on the grass as Hermione and Myrtle rolled shared an eye roll.

“You’re _so_ little,” Ron was teasing, using the extra foot he had on Harry to his advantage as he pinned him to the ground.  “Just a tiny adorable little baby bird.”

“You’re the _worst!”_ Harry screeched, a smile on his face as his wings flapped rapidly, trying to work up enough momentum to push Ron off of him and gain the upper hand.

“What’s with boys and their need to wrestle each other all the time?” Hermione sighed fondly (well, boys and _Ginny,_ her mind amended, as the youngest Weasley could easily take Fred and George when she was trying).

“What’s with the _lake?”_ Myrtle asked, watching the water slosh madly, the tides moving as if they were in the middle of a storm even though they were experiencing a rare sunny afternoon.

“That’s so… what on earth?” Hermione muttered.  “That’s so _strange…”_

Neither of the boys had noticed yet, so caught up in their roughhousing, and it wasn’t until a mermaid popped up, a scowl on her green-grey face and her hair clinging to her face like so much wet kelp and started hissing at them that they looked up.

“Bird-boy need _stop!”_ she yelled, and Harry looked up at her with his big soft eyes.

“Stop _what?”_ he asked.  “Surely you can’t hear us playing from down there?”

“No, but we can feel tiny creature wizard moving the tides,” she growled.  “Like ten moons in one night, naughty thing.”

“I… but I’m not doing anything…” Harry mumbled, suddenly noticing how the tides were moving.  Since he’d stopped wrestling Ron they had calmed down some, but waves were still hitting the sand with wet slapping sounds.

“Really?” she asked him, looking unimpressed.  “Move wing.”

Harry fluttered his right wing, and a geyser-like fountain came surging up in the middle of the lake before splashing back down when the wing moved back.

“So _Harry_ was the one who flooded my bathroom,” Myrtle whispered, watching the lake move.  Since the teen could no more stop the involuntary quivering of his wings than he could his own breathing, the water kept moving.

“Back to castle!” the mermaid ordered him sternly, so harry and his friends scampered away, Hermione jotting down a recounting of the experience in her leather notebook as they did so.

“Geez Myrt, I guess it was _my_ fault that your bathroom flooded; I’m sorry…” Harry stammered, looking lost.  “I don’t… I don’t know what’s going on…”

“It’s okay Harry; we’ll figure it out,” Hermione promised him.  “We should go see Luna; I mean, she said something about you having the ‘moonsong’ around you, and then the mermaid compared you to the moon, and the moon _does_ have an effect on the tides, so maybe that’s the key to figuring out this whole thing, maybe even what’s happening to you in general...”

“I sure _hope_ so,” the desi boy sighed.  “We should probably tell Professor McGonagall too, and maybe she can fix Myrtle’s bathroom.”

“The bathroom isn’t our biggest issue right now, Harry, don’t worry,” Myrtle reassured him, touched by how guilty he felt about disturbing her, even accidentally.  She wasn’t used to such consideration in all the fifty years she’d been here as a ghost. She sure hoped things worked out for him. Myrtle had been around a long time, and she’d gathered a lot of wisdom as a result.  And if there was one thing she knew for certain after all that time, it was that nobody deserved to be happy more than Harry did.


End file.
